Friend or Foe? A Realist Perspective on Alliance Formation in the Central African Republic

Abstract

In 2012, the Central African Republic (CAR) saw the beginning of what has been described as a civil war based on religion between two alliances: the primarily Muslim Séléka versus the primarily Christian anti-Balaka. These alliances have since fractionalized and reorganized into new alliances, some across the original religious divisions. In this thesis, I therefore explore the following research question: How can we explain shifting alliances between warring groups in the Central African Republic? To answer this, I develop seven hypotheses based on the international relations theory of neorealism. The hypotheses offer different explanations as to why and how the armed groups in CAR create alliances. To gather data for this primarily theory testing thesis, I adopt a twofold qualitative approach: Document analysis and semi-structured interviews. The main part of the analysis ranges from 2012 to 2018 and focuses on the groups that created and eventually fractionalized from Séléka and anti-Balaka. My results suggest that religion played a minimal role when it came to the forming of alliances but became increasingly important as a tool to justify violence towards civilians. The two most common ways of creating alliances in CAR are either to balance the opponent by allying with weaker actors, or to bandwagon to what is perceived to be the strongest actor. Most alliances in CAR are created with the motivation of potential gains, but there are also a few instances where security is the primary motivation for alliance formation.